Why Third‑Party Risk Reviews Matter in Higher Education

Colleges rely on hundreds of external vendors for critical business applications, learning platforms,  pedagogy tools, cloud services, student support operations, and fundraising systems. When one of those vendors suffers a security failure, the consequences fall squarely on the institution—impacting critical systems and the students, faculty, and staff who use them. Robust third‑party risk reviews are no longer optional; they are one of the most effective ways to prevent vendor‑driven incidents from becoming campus‑wide crises.

Recent breaches underscore how third‑party failures continue to drive major security incidents across higher education. The Oracle E‑Business Suite zero‑day exploited by CL0P resulted in large‑scale data exposure at institutions including the University of Phoenix, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2025, Western Sydney University reported that attackers accessed a misconfigured third‑party cloud file‑sharing system, exposing data for thousands of students. A recent UpGuard study found that more than a quarter of major higher‑ed vendors had experienced breaches or infostealer infections—evidence of systemic supply‑chain risk across the sector. And outside academia, a major hospital SMS‑phishing incident occurred when a third‑party appointment‑reminder vendor was compromised, leading to fraudulent texts sent to patients. It’s a powerful reminder that communication vendors—often used for campus alerts, counseling appointments, and student services—can be weaponized just as easily.

What FIT Does to Protect Against Third‑Party Risk – FIT recognized this increasing risk and implemented comprehensive vendor assessments nearly five years ago. Before contracting with any vendor, or at contract renewal, we conduct these risk assessments, which include:

• HECVAT Reviews: thoroughly review the available HECVAT (a standard assessment tool created by Educause) for all cloud‑based tools to evaluate the vendor’s overall security posture.
• SOC 2 / ISO 27001 Validation: review independent audit and attestation reports to confirm the vendor maintains appropriate controls and industry‑standard security practices.
• Incident History Checks: examine the vendor’s breach and security‑incident history over the past 3–5 years to identify patterns or red flags.
• FIT Security Addendum: collaborating with the Office of General Counsel (OGC), FIT created its own cybersecurity addendum, stronger contract language with clear terms for data protection, breach notification timelines, and vendor accountability, which we request each vendor to sign.
• Internal Controls Review: Present the completed third-party review to Internal Controls to ensure the risk assessments are approved by our internal auditors.

A single weak vendor can compromise even the strongest internal security program, which is why disciplined, repeatable, and thorough third-party risk reviews are essential to protecting our institution, our data, and our community.